Day three of the Letters of Pride Open Letters series  

The first time I met Sylvester I was just a baby gay. A friend of mine had somehow finagled a satellite dish that broadcast a signal from a public access signal in San Francisco. The show he was fond of was called Lavender Lounge, a very queer and low-budget version of American Bandstand, with dancers and a kooky host. The particular episode he wanted to show me was a tribute to Sylvester, featuring rare concert footage and live performances from the '70s.

I had heard "Do You Wanna Funk" for the first time in Sandra Berhard's "Without You I'm Nothing" but didn't clue in to the significance of the song, let alone how much of a game changer Sylvester was in the world of disco, dance and pop music.

If you'll permit me to mythologize for a moment, I can imagine that when Sylvester came out of the womb, his wail was probably a musical one. The young man became a gospel wunderkind at a tender age, and at 16 he moved to San Francisco, a time he recalled as the true beginnings of his life. Sylvester became part of the Cockettes and performed with them at a few of their shows. But it was in the late 1970s that his career really took off with the release of Steps II, an album that featured "Dance (Disco Heat)" and the disco anthem "You Make Me Feel Mighty Real." It was also at this time that he met producer and remixer Patrick Cowley. This was a musical union made in disco heaven.

Sylvester matched his previous success with "Do You Wanna Funk," another track recorded with Cowley.

It has been argued that it was that record that sparked the commercial and artistic fire that would become hi-NRG music, a sound that has its roots in San Francisco.

I remember watching this man, stunned by the voice that came out of him and equally stunned by the fact that here was a black man in drag, on television, and that this performance had taken place in the '70s. That a man in drag could rule the charts was unbelievable to me (however much I respected and admired it). It would take 15 years for RuPaul to do the same thing in the 1990s.

And as much as Sylvester was known for his strong performances on dance and disco records, it was how strongly they were steeped in gospel tradition that made them shine. His songs were gospel revivals brought to life in a club, moments of reverential ecstasy amidst the insanity of a dancefloor. Do yourself a favour: find a copy of Steps II. Dance to the disco beats but then stop and listen to the short reprise of "You Make Me Feel" at the end of the album. It's probably one of the greatest and most subdued performances of his career, but it is also, perhaps, his most stellar.

***

If you're wondering what to do for today's Pride events, check out the Funny HaHa Funny Queer show at the Atlantica Hotel. Show starts at 8pm and is $5 at the door.

If you're looking for something a little more sensual, Hot Times is putting on an event as SeaDogs. This event is for women, transgender, transsexual, genderqueer, non-binary, genderfuck, genderfluid, bi-gender, trans women, trans men, third gender, agender and further gender expressions. See Hot Time's Wordpress for more deets.  

To Mister White.

Sitting in my outbox is a letter addressed to you. It's been sitting there for over six months: a collection of notes and reminders of things to say, personal recollections and a compliment or three.

But I recently learned that you had suffered a stroke. This spurred me on to write this open letter, to thank you.

When I was fifteen years old, I smuggled a copy of one of yours books into my house. It was a paperback edition of A Boy's Own Story and The Beautiful Room Is Empty, with a big pink triangle on the spine. I had it sent to a friend’s house so that my parents wouldn’t open my mail. This is not to say that my parents would do such thing, but teenage boys are paranoid creatures.

That book was the first truly “gay” thing I ever owned, and I cherished it. It was like I gave myself permission to say it outloud, even if only to myself. That book was an object of desire.

I remember looking at it on my nightstand, wondering if my parents or sister would notice it, decipher the secrets that were hinted at by the pink triangle printed on the spine.

I would pull it out at night and read it, hoping to decipher the secrets of gay male sexuality. Like you, I was a bookish kid, precocious for his age (read: pretentious) and had a tendency to seek out literary reflections. You found "Death In Venice", and I found you. You studied French, I speak it fluently. The character of you, the struggles, the angst, the beauty of it all, were characteristics I understood and - perhaps in a bit of teenage angst - admired.

That book came into my house during the early 90s. AIDS was a big, scary word, drilled into my head by scared-straight big media, high school teachers, and the death of Freddie Mercury. But those two books were written and set before the onset of the-disease-that would-be-named. Your books gave me insight into a collective past, filtered through prose.

I am now near the age that you were when you started writing "A Boys Own Story". I don't see the world in the way I used to when I first read it, and perhaps not in the way you described it. But I wouldn't have gotten to this place in my life without having been given access to your past.

I wish you a full and speedy recovery,

S.

P.S. - In 1996, a friend of mine gave me a copy of "The Farewell Symphony". He had it signed by you, to me. It is still a treasured possession. A small link to you that I am grateful for.

***

Don’t know what to do today on the first Monday of Halifax Pride?

How about Hissy Fit? It’s kind of an annual tradition where all kinds of Halifax bands get together and get dressed in drag and perform their own tunes. No lip syncing here, this is rock’n’roll drag baby. For more info, click here.

The YouthProject's Pride Week Kick-Off BBQ is open to all LGBTQ youth and their allies ages 25 and under. It's free, starts at 5:30 and it's at The Youth Project, 2281 Brunswick Street in Halifax.

As mentioned in a previous post, PrideHealth is presenting it's Let’s Talk Trans Talk! at Hugh Bell Lecture Hall, Nova Scotia Hospital. Transgender, Transsexual, Two Spirited, Gender Queer, Gender Variant, Gender Identity, Cis Gender, Gender Binary, Gender Dysphoria…what do these terms mean and how do they relate to providing person-centred health?  For more info, contact Cybelle Rieber at 473‐1433 or prideHealth@cdha.nshealth.ca. And it's free!

An open letter to Sharon Needles:

When your name was announced, my fist went up in the air in victory.

I didn't watch Season 3 of Drag Race. I was bored with the show. Pretty and fishy queens "reading" one another, bad reality-tv paradigms and the interesting (read: untraditional) queens usually getting kicked off halfway through the show. No thanks. Next.

But this year I decided to watch. As soon as you walked onto the set, I knew that I was going to be watching, week after week. Here was a queen I could admire. A little punk, a little goth (okay, a lot goth), a little kooky but always well put together. Your drag was well conceived, well put together. You weren't afraid to open your mouth and speak your mind, but you also knew when and how to do it, unlike some cast-mates (* cough* Phi Phi * cough *).

You were the queen for the rest of us. Those of us who were tired of the classic queens who do Judy and Carol, the new queens who do Britney and Beyoncé. You are the avatar for the Siouxsie fans, the Diamanda Galás freaks and the Björk babies.

I salute you, Ms Needles. Not only for your win, but for your unwavering determination in being who you are.

And that is what makes us respect you, more than anything.

Mark Aguhar had passed away.

If you don’t know Aguhar but are on Tumblr, chances are you have seen their work.

Mark was one of the first people I ever saw on Tumblr.

Mark preferred the use of the pronoun “they” to convey their gender identity. It was the manifestation of that gender identity that drew me to Mark. Here was someone who was unafraid to express themselves in the way that spoke to their experience. Mark did not seek to express or explain the lives of people who lived outside the gender binary. They only expressed their own:

My work is about visibility. My work is about the fact that I’m a genderqueer person of color fat femme fag feminist and I don’t really know what to do with that identity in this world.

It’s that thing where you grew up learning to hate every aspect of yourself and unlearning all that misery is really hard to do.

It’s that thing where you kind of regret everything you’ve ever done because it’s so complicit with white hegemony.

It’s that thing where you realize that your own attempts at passive aggressive manipulation and power don’t stand a chance against the structural forms of DOMINATION against your body.

It’s that thing where the only way to cope with the reality of your situation is to pretend it doesn’t exist; because flippancy is a privilege you don’t own but you’re going to pretend you do anyway.

Mark’s work was made for the parameters of an online presence. Even though their work went from performance-based pieces to classic forms of visual art, there was an immediacy present in their work that gave it and its viewers a pressing need to share. To show. To embrace and spread the love and beauty present within it. Their work was often reblogged, often without proper accreditation, across microblogging sites like Tumblr. It would pop up anywhere from art fan blogs to porn to gender-queer sites.

"Even If UR STR8 I Still Want 2 Fuck U 2," by Mark Aguhar

I didn’t know Mark personally. I never had that privilege. But I admired them. And I knew people who knew and admired them as well. If I can do one small thing in helping ease that pain today by writing about how beautiful Mark was, then here it is.

Goodbye, Mark.

That voice was Antony Hegarty's, performing "I Fell in Love with a Dead Boy." He asked, "Are you a boy or a girl?"

Here, gender didn't matter. The story, the truth and the voice mattered.

There were bits of Nina Simone and Jimmy Scott, Klaus Nomi and Lou Reed. The voice was glorious, otherworldly and spoke to me like very few voices ever have.

The more I learned about Antony, and the more I listened to his work, the more I fell in love. Here was someone who was unafraid to open himself in song, writing heartbreaking songs mingled with uplifting, almost spiritual tunes about love, rebirth and gender. Antony has spoken publicly about living outside of gender norms, in his dress, his performances, his songs and more. Who else could sing a song titled "For Today I Am a Boy," with lyrics such as "One day I will grow up and be a beautiful woman. One day I'll grow up and feel the power within me." Even the name of his band, "The Johnsons," is a reference to performer Marsha P Johnson. Antony challenges his audience to listen with intent and openness, often performing entire portions of his show in next to complete darkness, the light slowly but surely creeping in as the show goes on.

Hegarty is an accidental champion of sorts, speaking out on everything from environmentalism to finding beauty in the fringes. He has collaborated with everyone from Lou Reed, Björk, CocoRosie, Hercules & Love Affair, Boy George and Rufus Wainwright and has been a proponent and friend of mathematician/performance artist Julia Yasuda. He has even covered Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love," creating what is perhaps the most meta covers of all time.

Last weekend, Antony performed a show in New York at Radio City Music Hall entitled Swanlights. The performance was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art and was touted as “a meditation on light, nature and femininity.” A friend had the opportunity to see the show and described it as a "magical" experience. I would expect nothing less.

Hegarty is an artist for the 21st century, an antidote to the pap of pop, and is asking us to do something very few of us do anymore when it comes to music: to listen to each other intently.

Hello Ms Smith,

I always wondered what I would say if I ever met you. A friend of mine who used to live in New York said that he once met you and that you were very kind to him, and encouraged him to keep writing. In your own way, I would like to think that you have done the same for me, even though we have never met.

I was introduced to your work when I was a teenager, when a friend sat me down and said, “Listen to this” and played me “Land.” I felt like I was Johnny, imagining what it would be like to push the boys against the locker and feel free, and to dissapear on the wind like a horse. Your words spoke to me in a language I didn’t know I understood, like a lost mother tongue. It moved me so much that I felt the need to tell as many stories as I could in my new language. Thank you for that.

There are certain works of art that are of their time and speak only of that time. They are locked in history as being “of the period.” Although “Horses” was released in the 1970s, it speaks beyond the time in which it was made. Those horses you spoke/sang of live on a current of timelessness, ebbing and flowing into the lives of those who wish to ride them.

In the same way, there are works of art that, to the viewer/reader/listener, will only speak of a certain time of life. Not so with yours. The older I get, the more I read, the more I experience, the more I come to appreciate the glory of it. As a man in my 20s, I recognized the sparks of Genet and Rimbaud, the tone of the outsider that lived in your work. You were the woman who told me about living outside of society. As a man now in my 30s, I see the quiet compassion that comes through your work. I await what will come later with gratitude.

I would argue that for many like me, you are an icon: the icon of the outsiders, no matter what world they are forced to live outside of. We live outside and are proud of it, as we have found someone who can articulate the passion, the rage, the serenity and the stories of what it means to be outside society. That is what makes an icon.

That is what makes an artist.

It occurs to me that I recently missed your birthday. I would like to present this letter as a belated gift, an homage to you in the form we have come to know you – the word. This is the word of thanks, the word of gratitude. This is the word that says outside of society is where I want to be.

To the person who posted this video,

When I was a teenager during the '90s, I didn’t have access to the internet in the same way you do. I didn’t have the capacity to express myself to an entire world of people. I can’t imagine what it feels like to open yourself up in that way.

This is not to say that I didn’t express myself. I did. And in very public ways. But my public was small, while yours is grand.

I can’t imagine what it was like for you, the moment when you posted this video. Or the moments in which you waited for the first hits to happen. I can’t imagine what it was like when your schoolmates found this video. When your teachers saw it. What it was like when the media picked it up. What it’s like now that it’s gone viral.

You mention that kids have been bullying you since elementary school. I can relate. It started for me at the same time. My second day of school, in fact.

I don’t know if you’re real. This is the internet after all. But for the sake of argument, let’s say you are. I hope you are. Because I have something to tell you.

You’re doing exactly what you need to be doing. You’re asking people to listen. The people who listen may not always be the people you want, but in there, in that big wide world out there, people are listening to you. And they will respond to you if you want them to.

We are out there. We are you, and of you, and will help you.

I would tell you that if you want help, all you have to do is ask.

But you just did.

And that is the hardest, most beautiful thing to do.

This letter was inspired by my previous open letter to Scott Thompson and a recent interview with Waters published in Slate, written by Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson.

Dear John,

            I won’t start this letter with a thank you or a fuck you. I’m sure you’ve received lots of letters that start off with both of those. So how about “Howdy”? Now that the greetings are over with, I will, if you will permit me, praise you. Just a little bit. 

            I think the best way to tell you what I think of you is to tell you a few anecdotes that involve you and your films. First, I used to use your films as litmus tests for potential boyfriends. If they could handle watching Pink Flamingos and laugh their asses off, they were in. If not, I would seriously reconsider dating – or at least fucking – them. A sense of humour is one of the sexiest things around. By the same token, I know that when I meet people and the subject of your films and books comes up, if they think favourably of you, I tend to think more favourably of them. Birds of a feather and all that.

            A friend of mine and I discovered your films in the early '90s, when Cry-Baby came out. We were degenerate teens (at least in our own minds) and fell in love with Cry-Baby's "drapes." We both wanted to hang out with Hatchet Face and Wanda. C’mon, even gay teenage boys want to hang out with Traci Lords! One afternoon my friend and I were watching Cry Baby and Hairspray when my mother walked in. She sat down with us and enjoyed them as well. She thought they were silly, mind you. My favourite memory of that day was when she admitted to having hair like some of the girls in the movie. My own mother, a hair hopper! I gained a new level of respect for her.

I remember when I was in my first few years of university, I had a couple friends who were still in high school. I had told them about Pink Flamingos – this was during the '90s and my high school was in a rural area, where no video stores had a copy of it – and they wanted to see it, so I lent them my copy. I never got it back, but it did make the rounds of my former high school. I recently met up with an old teacher who told me that he figured I was the one who had lent it to his students. He applauded me for my love of bad taste.

In a recent interview, you talked about your “mixed feelings about gay culture going mainstream.” I have to say I applaud you for asking the question, “Why can’t we be villains in movies?” I think that’s why I always liked your movies. Anyone can be a villain, and who cares what they put where or why or how. No one is safe, just because they’re part of a (sub)culture. They can be as rotten or as wonderful as anyone else, just like in real life. 

            I think you should make more movies. I understand that you’ve been having difficulties getting your latest project, Fruitcake, off the ground. I guess no one wants to make a movie about a runaway boy who meets a girl, who was raised by gay guys, in pursuit of her long lost mother. As Clay Davis from The Wire (yay, Baltimore!) would say, “Sheeeit.” I’d pay to see that. Any time. I only wish I had the money to help you with it. Maybe Kickstarter or IndieGogo? C'mon, if Mink Stole can do it, so can you!

            I’d like to finish my letter by telling you one final anecdote. I think the best reaction to one of your movies I ever witnessed was when I was screening Flamingos for a group of friends. At the scene where Cracker and Cookie are fucking/fighting with the chicken, one girl got up and almost vomited. She began to cry, as she found the scene repulsive and repugnant. I couldn’t stop laughing. Thanks for that.

Keep on doing what you’re doing. You’ll always have a fan in me.

- Simon

PS: Did you know that Pink Flamingos is on Nova Scotia’s “banned films” list? It was banned when it was released in the '70s and has never been reclassified.  Video stores here have copies of it, but if someone makes a complaint, the province can take it off the shelves. The more things change . . . 

Dear Scott,

I am writing this letter to thank you. No, we’ve never met, although I’m sure you and I are separated by less than two degrees of separation. C’mon, we’re gay and Canadian -- it can’t be that many degrees.

My thanks is for you doing what you do and saying what you say, no matter what. It takes a lot of courage (or balls) to do that. When I was a just a baby gay, living in rural Nova Scotia, I would often watch Kids in the Hall, and there you were, on television. An openly gay man doing everything from queening it up to butching it up, depending on how you were feeling. You showed me I wasn’t the only homo alone; although I wasn’t having parties -- I was voguing in my living room.

I know it hasn’t been easy, being openly gay and being unapologetic. I’m sure you’ve lost certain opportunities, or maybe didn’t get what you were promised. I recently read an interview with you, where you told bullied youth to “grow a pair.” I did grow a pair, and you were one of the reasons.

Seeing you on TV made me know that if I did, things would get better, because I made them better. The character that really made me feel okay to be gay was Buddy Cole. Although you took flak for the character, Buddy was unapologetic about who he was. I would tape episodes of KITH and rewatch Buddy as he would name off queer icons, which I would later look up to discover their secrets, looking for an identity hidden amongst all the references. My best friend and I would quote entire segments of his monologues to each other and laugh, even though we had heard the joke at least a dozen times. As a kid who knew he was gay (and was apparently rather flaming), Buddy taught me to grow a pair and tell guys to fuck off when they harassed me. So I would like to thank you for that.

Although I sincerely doubt that in the 20-some years since you were on the air no one else has said thank you for being unapologetic, I still will.

Thanks, Scott.

Your fan, Simon.

PS: I did meet Paul Bellini once in a gay bookstore in Halifax. He bought a first edition of Belle Poitrine by Patrick Dennis, a purchase I still envy him. A few years later, he sent me some of his video/film works. I guess we have one degree of seperation. Say hi to him for me, would ya?